Teen baseball purist comes up with Barry good idea

Wednesday

MARBLEHEAD, Mass. -- When life gives you a disgrace of a home run champion, why not turn your disgust into dollars? That’s the business plan of entrepreneur Yoni Golub-Sass, 19.

When life gives you a disgrace of a home run champion, why not turn your disgust into dollars?

That’s the business plan of entrepreneur Yoni Golub-Sass, a 19-year-old Marblehead High School graduate and sophomore at Salem State College.

Through his Web site, www.theyopost.com, and by word of mouth, he has been marketing a T-shirt that is resonating with fellow baseball purists.

The back of the shirt is instantly familiar: the name “Bonds” and the number 25 in black-and-orange lettering. The color scheme continues on the front, but in lieu of Bonds’ team’s name, “Giants,” are five letters, “B-A-L-C-O,” the acronym by which the infamous Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative has come to be known.

BALCO, founded and owned by Victor Conte, is believed to have supplied Barry Bonds and a number of other high-profile athletes with designer steroids and growth hormones.

In a 2004 televised interview, Conte laid claim to running doping programs for track-and-field stars who felled Olympic records. In 2005, he struck a plea deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute steroids and a second count of laundering a portion of a check and was sentenced to four months in prison and another four on house arrest.

Now, another former BALCO client, Bonds, is at the precipice of surpassing perhaps the most revered mark in all of American sports, Hank Aaron’s career total of 755 home runs. Entering play Wednesday night, Bonds stood at 753, just two shy of Aaron’s mark.

That does not sit well with Golub-Sass. He admits that, in 1998, he was seduced by Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa’s ultimately successful pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record. Golub-Sass said he even found himself listening to a late-season Cubs-Cardinals game on the radio so as not to miss McGwire’s historic 62nd homer.

Several years, some leaked grand-jury testimony and a few Congressional hearings later, Golub-Sass realized that the sluggers’ exploits were likely steroid-fueled.

“I feel so duped,” he said, adding that Major League Baseball, with its lax drug policies, has been complicit in the recent fraudulent assault on the record books.

Bonds has since surpassed McGwire’s mark of 70 home runs, hitting 73 in 2001, solidifying his role as poster child for baseball’s ills.

Not only will Golub-Sass not be fooled again, he is fighting back and giving like-minded fans a way to make a statement.

He said he got the idea for the uniform-style T-shirt about 18 months ago.

A frequent Fenway Park visitor, Golub-Sass noted that name-and-number Ts were one of the hottest sellers at souvenir shops. All along Yawkey Way, one can purchase shirts supporting most of the Red Sox 25-man roster and many other current All-Stars, along with heroes of the past like Ted Williams, Carlton Fisk and Carl Yastrzemski (though Golub-Sass noted his chagrin in being unable to find a Tony Conigliaro model in this, the 40th anniversary of the Red Sox “Impossible Dream” World Series team).

From there, it was a short leap to his anti-Bonds brainstorm.

He said he would go to Fenway Park, see all the uniform Ts and wonder, “Why isn’t someone doing [a Bonds-BALCO shirt]?”

Golub-Sass became that someone with the help of his parents, who gave him some seed money as a high school graduation present. X-treme Silkscreen & Design in Lynn produced the first run of 250 shirts.

Golub-Sass said that when he went to pick up his order, the owner was wearing one of the shirts. Not only that, he had sported it at his son’s Little League game. The response?

“Everyone laughed hysterically,” Golub-Sass was told.

While casual fans may not know of BALCO, those who do almost universally have that same positive reaction to the shirt, Golub-Sass said. That includes a Bay Area resident whom Golub-Sass encountered while sporting one to the Edward Hopper exhibition at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts (Golub-Sass says he wears his own T so often, “I’m almost like a cartoon character.”)

While many in San Francisco blindly support Bonds, such was not the case for this fan, who said he had not purchased a scrap of Giants memorabilia since Bonds joined the team in 1993. He did, however, place an order with Golub-Sass.

Perhaps fearing that his peak marketing period is quickly drawing to a close, Golub-Sass recently lowered the price of the shirts to $12. He joked that after Bonds inevitably passes Aaron, he will produce a “special edition” of the shirts by adding an asterisk to the front, signifying the dubious nature of Bonds' achievement.

Golub-Sass noted the inequity of Roger Maris having to endure the indignity of having his single-season HR mark bear an asterisk simply because he played a longer season than the previous record holder, Babe Ruth, while a strong suspicion of using performance-enhancing drugs will earn Bonds no such smear.

If and when he breaks even, Golub-Sass plans to donate 10 percent of the profits from sales to the Jimmy Fund, which supports research and care at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

“One of my favorite charities,” he said.

If he never gets to that point, he will take comfort that he at least did not sit idly by as Bonds made his ignominious ascent to the top of the home run heap.

Marblehead (Mass.) Reporter

Contact Kris Olson at kolson@cnc.com.

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